Finding ordnance

In the street. And, supposedly, it was a missile.

A missile was found in the middle of a street in West Bexar County Thursday morning.

The missile was discovered around 9:00 a.m. at the intersection of Firefox Den and Barking Wolf, near Loop 1604 and Marbach Road.

Bexar County officials said the missile, which was 16" to 18" long, was used for training purposes and was not a 'live.'

(from WOAI-TV)

I don't know, a foot and a half seems a bit short to be a "missile". I know that it's possible something that size could be guided, and then, therefore, a missile. But that sounds more like a rocket.

Either way, it's not something you would expect to find in the street, whether it is "a 'live'" or not.

Gettin' medieval on Talisman Street

Here in Texas, home invaders better think twice. Most of us will shoot back.

But a select few will take you back to the Middle Ages.

 Three men who broke into a home Thursday morning on the city's East side were confronted by a homeowner with a sword, San Antonio police said.

The homeowner, Robert Suniga, told police the men said they were looking for his son.

"They were saying that they were SAPD. They were saying they had a search warrant. They were saying that he raped their little sister," Suniga said.

Suniga didn't buy the mens' story. Instead of handing over his son, Suniga armed himself for a fight. He went to his bedroom to get a sword that a friend gave him as a gift, telling him to use it to protect his family.

(from KSAT-12)

Burning Christmas

It looks like Ebenezer Scrooge is still alive. And I don't think he's changed much.

A torched Christmas tree sent people scrambling from a Denny's restaurant early Sunday and investigators say the fire was no accident.

The fire happened at the Denny's near 35 and Rittiman just after 3:30 a.m.

Investigators say it appears someone set the restaurant's Christmas tree ablaze.

(from KSAT-12)

"New LED street lights fail in the rain"

Sometimes it's better to be a late adopter of a new technology. That way, you let all the other folks work through the bugs before you spend your money on it.

But the leaders of San Antonio seem to love to adopt anything "green" just as soon as they possibly can, even before all the problems have been discovered. And sometimes this produces head-shaking results.

Earlier this year we told you the City of San Antonio and CPS Energy are spending more than $14 million of your money to replace street lights with energy saving LED fixtures.  Now the News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooters have uncovered that all 25,000 of the fixtures had to be sent back to the manufacturer because of a glaring defect.

Close to 2,000 of the street lights are already up in a few areas around the city, but installations came to a halt a few weeks ago when some of the new fixtures began to fail. 

...

In September CPS Energy noticed something similar happening: some of the new lights going dark shortly after installation.  And the cause?  Rain… getting into the fixtures and shorting them out.

(from WOAI-TV)

Seems they've also had problems with bird droppings covering up the sensors that are supposed to tell the lights to shut off in the daytime. In the end, these LED lights will probably work out to be a good product, but I bet you didn't know that you, as a San Antonio taxpayer, were helping to pay for the beta testing.

And you don't even get to play with it.